XMas 2010

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It’s funny, dear reader, how subtle aversive behavior is. Why don’t I write more frequent entries in this thing? Is iWeb just that inconvenient? In fact, it would be hard to imagine Apple making it easier to use, except for migrating templates. So why?

Doing a work-from-home thing, every task takes a bit longer. I compare stuff all day long, sometimes side-by-side (please Bank Santa, a bigger monitor?) sometimes side-by-head. I’m constantly pulling up stuff, I mean constantly. I think I’m opening content every minute all day long, which seems just like you do until we put video cameras over our shoulders and record a day’s interaction. So adding just a tick, say 1-2 seconds, to each of those pull-ups, is really noticeable. So though I love not driving, I have to say, the inefficiency is a pain.

Thus, is the slight delay for iWeb enough to prevent me from telling you more of my daily life? Well, stuff has to rise to a threshold of interest to put it onto this platform. And since this is message-in-a-bottle stuff, and I prefer even delayed reaction afforded by email and yes, even FaceBook, I guess we’ve hit on the crummy combo that impedes blogeation.

So XMas 2010: The Teen Soon Not To Be (a teen) is nearer to school. She’s just announced her intent to delay her Chicago trip by one day to be able to take the admissions test for a local college. WOO-HOO!!! I’ve figured that I’ll file with the IRS on 1/1/2010 if at all possible, and that refund—which was going to be our spare-tire for the lovely new “High Deductable Health Insurance” plan that our stockholders have imposed on us—will now be at least partially repurposed for TTSNTB’s tuition.

2011 is shaping up to be the tightest year financially since probably ’95? The year we sold our house to move into my mother-in-law’s. Our gratitude there will never be properly expressed, due to the horrific mixture of feelings that precipitated the move. This year’s ace-in-the-hole is perhaps getting the TTSNTB employed. Tough thing to bet on, with PhD’s taking fry-cook jobs (I’ve met two: no, I’m not kidding).

So my picture is of the garage at the Spider House sporting about 1/3rd of the snow currently piled up. See the fence running off the left edge of the picture? That’s no longer visible for the mountain of snow. The Orange Bastard, a very cranky snowblower that my landlord has put at our disposal, is an interesting beast. When working, it needs 5 hands to operate smoothly. With only the two, it takes practice to get down the moves to try to save the engine when it begins to stall. But once mastered, that move becomes pretty elegant. Now we’ll see if it gets better on real gas, I had to burn up the gas-oil mix that I had, sorry. It is pretty fragile, though. Hey, dear reader, sorry for the litany of tears. I still retain my inherent optimism that all people are basically good, and always decent at arm’s reach. (You cannot blame anyone for hating strangers in far-off places.) I’m confident, in my usual Bullwinkellian manner, that my last great love is right around the corner. I’m happy to see TTSNTB every day, and she’s become very good at hugs, giving and receiving. The Spider House is odd in so many ways, but as the TTSNTB once said about a person, “odd but nice.” Blur still runs, although coming off 2 years of mostly motorcycle and foot, I’m harder on her than ever. Way to go, Ford. My computer life is pretty ok, the old aluminum powerbook has been functionally made into a picture frame, now I need to actually frame it. Life is good. To paraphrase the quote above, “hard but good.” I hope your seasonally appropriate activities involve friends and family. Gifts really don’t matter. It’s time with them that does.